Rare Mexican Mummies in Dallas

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"The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato" exhibit will run May 27 to Sept. 5 at the West End Market Place in Dallas.

Updated at 12:36 AM CDT on Wednesday, May 11, 2011

A Mexican mummies exhibit is moving to Dallas more than a year after its debut in Detroit.

36 mummies make up the "The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato" exhibit.

Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato

The exhibit takes visitors to a unique cemetery where residents of Guanajuato who died more than 100 years ago and were naturally mummified in their crypts.

Only 1 in 100 bodies entombed in the Mexican city experiences the rare and mysterious process of natural mummification. The phenomena was discovered in 1865 when cemetery workers in the Santa Paula Pantheon exhumed the remains of a doctor and found his body had not decayed but was mummified.

The exhibit offers information about the mummies, who they were, how they lived and died and the culture of the people, as well as a forensic lab explaining how scientists analyze the remains.

Organizers said Tuesday the exhibit will run May 27 to Sept. 5 at the West End Market Place in Dallas.

The mummies are on loan from a museum in Guanajuato, Mexico, and their debut at the Detroit Science Center in November 2009 was their first display in the U.S.

A long U.S. tour was planned, but the mummies have been stored in Detroit since May 2010.

A company that controls the U.S. rights filed a lawsuit last year, accusing the touring company of falling far behind in payments. The case was settled in January with no details made public.